One Thing That Could Doom Virtual Reality: Vomit

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Virtual reality - One Thing That Could Doom Virtual Reality: Vomit

Source: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung via Flickr (Modified)

Virtual reality is one of the most hyped technologies in recent memory. It’s so big that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) spent $2 billion to snap up Oculus VR, while both Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) are scrambling in an unprecedented move to upgrade the hardware in their game consoles mid-cycle to support virtual reality. However, the rush to get VR to market could be derailed by one thing: vomit.

One Thing That Could Doom Virtual Reality: Vomit

Some VR games are making players sick and that’s the kind of experience that could kill virtual reality before it gets the chance to go mainstream.

The challenge of motion sickness and virtual reality has been an issue since the first headsets started showing up at tech conference demo booths, but the issue really ramped up at this year’s E3 Expo, the video game industry’s biggest annual event.

At E3, vomit became a headline, and it was largely blamed on the fact that console makers are trying to shoehorn virtual reality support into their current systems in order to take advantage of the hype. Add in game developers pushing the limits of the technology, while experimenting with VR in-game controls, and you have the perfect recipe for a PR nightmare.

Virtual Reality Faces Negative Press

Virtual reality received plenty of press at E3 2016, but much of it was in headlines that won’t encourage consumers to invest in the technology. “Resident Evil 7 in VR is a sweaty, puke-inducing masterpiece” and “Fallout 4 VR Adds Teleportation So You Won’t Puke,” are just a few among several negative headlines regarding the VR experience.

While virtual reality was a star at E3 2016, sickened gamers turned what could have been a victorious launch party for the coming wave of VR gaming into a moment of doubt. It doesn’t matter how cool a game is, if you can only play for a few minutes before becoming physically ill, what’s the point?

With so much attention now focused on nausea, there is a very real concern that the problem could turn players off VR systems before the industry ever gets the opportunity to go mainstream.

The founder of Oculus — maker of the VR-pioneering Oculus Rift headset — was one of many who has voiced concern about the issue. Back in 2014, he said in an interview “I think really bad VR is the only thing that can kill off VR.

It seems as though Sony’s Playstation VR is exactly the kind of “really bad VR” experience that Oculus was worried about. Sony is pushing virtual reality in a big way, with the Playstation VR headset due in October and 50 VR games for the platform on track for the end of the year.

Because it uses existing PS4 hardware and the headset itself costs just $399 (in comparison the Oculus Rift, which costs $599 and requires an expensive gaming PC), Playstation VR seems likely to be the public face of mass-market virtual reality this holiday shopping season.

Unfortunately, Sony’s hardware supports frame rates of just 60 fps, compared to the 90 fps that other VR headsets require for games. That low frame rate is a known contributor to nausea and the Resident Evil game that made headlines for making attendees throw up was running on the Playstation VR.

There are ways to reduce the risk of VR games inducing nausea in players. High frame rates help, and both Sony and Microsoft are working on console versions with additional processing power to support this.

Studies have suggested reducing the player’s field of view will help — although doing so also takes away from the whole virtual reality experience. Even the Mayo Clinic is getting involved, with a technology called GVS that was first developed to combat vertigo but has been found also to eliminate sickness in most people using VR headsets.

VR: Dead on Arrival?

The problem is that all of these potential solutions are sometime in the future. If the first wave of virtual reality gaming on a mainstream basis is anything like what happened at E3 2016 with Resident Evil 7, VR could be dead on arrival.

And the promise of better versions arriving later may not be enough to resuscitate it before it joins other promising technology like 3D on the heap of “must-have” features that consumers had a poor initial experience with then ultimately opted to ignore.

As of this writing, Brad Moon did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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Brad Moon has been writing for InvestorPlace.com since 2012. He also writes about stocks for Kiplinger and has been a senior contributor focusing on consumer technology for Forbes since 2015.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2016/06/virtual-reality-vr-games-vomit/.

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